When you started working from home, did you dream about customizing your space with the perfect furniture, lighting, and equipment? When you transition from another company's office to your own space, it's easy to get caught up in the details of your day-to-day grind area and forget about one of the most important spaces needed to push sales over the edge: a meeting room. This is the area that immerses potential clients in your brand, showcases your great products and services, and  gives your clients distraction-free focus on what you have to offer. Here are some strategies that will help you establish a successful meeting room:

1. Location, Location, Location

When choosing an area to develop into your meeting room, you must consider several factors: how frequently you plan to meet with clients, and how much is riding on those meetings? If you answered either of those questions with “a lot,” you should really invest in a dedicated space in your home that is used only for meetings. Do you have an extra bedroom or area that could be set aside and only for meetings? Could you move your office somewhere else to make room? If you're planning on having relatively few meetings, you should designate an area that can be easily converted into a meeting space.

2. Pay Attention to First Impressions

Whether you meet a person for the first time or visit a location, your first, and often the most lasting impression you have is made within the first few seconds.  The same thing occurs when potential customers and clients visit your meeting room.  Because it is in your home, it is especially important to present a clean, polished area that leaves no question about your professionalism.

To that end, the décor in your meeting room should showcase your company’s brand by emphasizing your signature colors and your logo. Everything from the color of your upholstery and paint to the art hanging on your walls should be used to call attention to your unique brand.  This creates a lasting impression that enables customers and clients to remember you and the products or services you have to offer.

3. Display Products or Samples of Your Work

Whether you are selling products or services, your meeting room should showcase examples of what you can provide or do for your potential customers or clients.  If you're selling a product, lay out physical samples for customers to examine or offer free samples for them to take with them when they leave. If you are offering a service, such as design or architectural services, photographs of your completed projects can be displayed and made available for potential clients to take with them.

4. Provide Brochures and Business Cards

To extend your branding presence beyond the meeting, informational literature is key. Particularly if you cannot provide product samples for your potential customers or clients to take with them, it's important to have informational brochures and business cards at your meeting table (and anywhere else you can sneak them in).

All literature should be designed to reflect your brand and professionally printed—this is not a do-it-yourself task. Brochures and business cards should prominently feature your contact information, as this often will be the means your customers will use you contact you again.  All informational literature should be updated frequently to make sure they contain accurate and up-to-date information about your business and products.

5. Use Your Walls to Promote Your Products or Services

The walls of your conference room can be used as prime real estate to promote your brand.  Invest in high quality photographs of the items you produce or provide and hang them prominently in your conference room.  Depending upon the size of your space, you may use wall mounted or pedestal posters. 

To really wow your clients, consider using high tech multimedia posters to showcase the products you have available or successful projects you have completed. In addition to showcasing your products, posters also can be designed to display good recommendations, reviews and ratings by prior customers or clients. 

6. Invest in an experience

When presenting to clients, whether its showcasing past successes or unveiling the product or service they hired you for, remember that it's about creating a complete experience. From the moment they sit down, clients should feel at ease. Above and beyond regular home décor, you should search for modern, sleek furniture that conveys professionalism while providing comfort. Provide refreshments like bottled water and coffee, and consider playing light music over speakers to set a relaxed tone.

When it comes to presentation time, your clients should already feel they are being given world-class treatment. Keep the momentum building with high-resolution television or projection screens connected to your laptop to display your work in the best possible quality. If you are giving them a physical product, display it professionally for maximum impact by having it spotlighted on a table or stand. If you play your cards right, when your client leaves your meeting room, they will remember not only your product or service, but the entire experience of your brand.

Comments (1)

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Using an outside meeting room
written by Meeting Room finder, May 07, 2012

The other option is to use an external meeting room. You generally have to pay for them, of course, so it gets expensive if you use it more than a few times.

It does, however, give the flexibility to choose a room with the location, size and facilities to for that specific meeting.

If you are in the UK, there is a great meeting room finder service from Venue Detective - see http://www.venuedetective.co.u...oom_london

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